eDiscovery is often described as the process of identifying, collecting, reviewing and producing electronic information relating to a legal case or investigation. While technically accurate, this description can be misleading in that it implies the use cases for eDiscovery solutions are limited to litigation and investigation, alone.

Is it time to re-think eDiscovery as a value-add service rather than a necessary evil?

In reality, the systematic analysis of a body of client-supplied electronic information forms a core part of a number of legal services, from contract review and due diligence to data subject access request responses. Many of these services require very similar – if not identical – capabilities to those required for litigation/investigation-related eDiscovery: adding observations, tagging relevant facts, inserting annotations or fields, or even redacting elements before producing a consolidated report of findings, advice and/or opinions.

Despite being such a neat fit for today’s eDiscovery tools and processes, it remains relatively rare to see eDiscovery solutions used outside of litigation and investigation. Is that driven by the typical ‘pay as you go’ pricing structure and usage model of eDiscovery platforms and services, which makes smaller engagements unaffordable?

What if eDiscovery could be bought as a subscription?

For a fixed (and therefore highly predictable) per-Gigabyte fee, the subscription bundle could include eDiscovery services together with reusable capacity on the eDiscovery platform. By aggregating volume requirements across all departments and all use cases, legal teams could benefit from extraordinary economies of scale. And by taking advantage of natural project churn to make the most of annual reusable capacity, the potential is there to have a subscription that costs notably less than the sum of its individually priced project “parts”. Parts which no longer need to be large to be worthwhile.

Maximise your investment in eDiscovery capability

No matter how you slice and dice it, eDiscovery capabilities are a big investment. It makes sense to put that investment to work in as many ways as possible.

Being able to use your eDiscovery platform in between (or alongside) litigation and investigation to securely ingest, review and analyse other content unlocks a whole new world of potential value. For law firms, it could enable you to keep document management systems free of transient client data, reducing the volume – and therefore cost – of long-term data retention at the close of each matter. Within corporates, downtime between projects could be used to put your eDiscovery capabilities to work proactively supervising data for compliance and fraud risk mitigation. Prevention is always better (and usually cheaper) than cure so why not maximise the value from an eDiscovery subscription?

Don’t get left behind on ‘pay-as-you-go’

At Salient, our clients are already taking advantage of this innovative new approach to pricing. Our subscription clients receive the same, world-class, end-to-end eDiscovery service, backed by the same cutting-edge AI/ML technology and expert skill, but with the following added benefits:

• Fixed (and fully inclusive) cost for the ultimate predictability – no hidden expenses or additional processing or user fees
• Reduced price points available for larger volumes and longer subscription terms – enjoy greater economies of scale by consolidating organisation-wide needs
• Reusable volume over the subscription term
• Volume “in use” based on peak activated data – free up capacity for new projects as you cull and filter existing ones

Come and talk to us at our stand at the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest on 6 November. We offer eDiscovery powered by Reveal, eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 and can share some of our innovative applications of this powerful and versatile technology. Alternatively, visit our website at www.salientdiscovery.com to find out more about our skills and services.